A Reading Of Life Contents: A Reading of Life--The Vital ChoiceA Reading of Life--With The HuntressA Reading of Life--With The PersuaderA Reading of Life--The Test of ManhoodThe Cageing of AresThe Night-WalkThe Hueless LoveSong In The SonglessUnion In DisseveranceThe Burden of StrengthThe Main RegretAlternationHawardenAt the CloseForest HistoryA Garden IdylForesight And PatienceThe Invective of AchillesThe Invective of Achilles--V. 225Marshalling of the AchaiansAgamemnon in the FightParis and DiomedesHypnos on IdaClash in Arms of the Achaians And TrojansThe Horses of AchillesThe Mares of the Camargue Poem: A Reading of Life--The Vital Choice I. Or shall we run with ArtemisOr yield the breast to Aphrodite?Both are mighty;Both give bliss;Each can torture if divided;Each claims worship undivided, In her wake would have us wallow. II. Youth must offer on bent kneesHomage unto one or other;Earth, the mother, This decrees;And unto the pallid ScytherEither points us shun we eitherShun or too devoutly follow. Poem: A Reading of Life--With The Huntress Through the water-eye of night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flightIn deep forest; oread, faun, Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;Ravenous all the line for speed. See yon wavy sparkle beckSign of the Virgin Lady's lead. Down her course a serpent starCoils and shatters at her heels;Peals the horn exulting, pealsPlaintive, is it near or far. Huntress, arrowy to pursue, In and out of woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, over fen, She and forest, where she skimsFeathery, darken and relume:Those are her white-lightning limbsCleaving loads of leafy gloom. Mountains hear her and call back, Shrewd with night: a frosty wailDistant: her the emerald valeFolds, and wonders in her track. Now her retinue is lean, Many rearward; streams the chaseEager forth of covert; seenOne hot tide the rapturous race. Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, Up on a flash the lighted moundLeaps she, bow to shoulder, shaftStrung to barb with archer's craft, Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feetSongs to see, past pitch of sweet. Fearful swiftness they outrun, Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, Challenge, charge of tusks elude:Theirs the dance to tame the rude;Beast, and beast in manhood tame, Follow we their silver flame. Pride of flesh from bondage free, Reaping vigour of its waste, Marks her servitors, and sheSanctifies the unembraced. Nought of perilous she reeks;Valour clothes her open breast;Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;Hallowed by the sex confessed. Huntress arrowy to pursue, Colder she than sunless dew, She, that breath of upper air;Ay, but never lyrist sang, Draught of Bacchus never sprangBlood the bliss of Gods to share, High o'er sweep of eagle wings, Like the run with her, when ringsClear her rally, and her dart, In the forest's cavern heart, Tells of her victorious aim. Then is pause and chatter, cheer, Laughter at some satyr lame, Looks upon the fallen deer, Measuring his noble crest;Here a favourite in her train, Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;All applauded. Shall she reignWorshipped? O to be with her there!She, that breath of nimble air, Lifts the breast to giant power. Maid and man, and man and maid, Who each other would devourElsewhere, by the chase betrayed, There are comrades, led by her, Maid-preserver, man-maker. Poem: A Reading of Life--With The Persuader Who murmurs, hither, hither: whoWhere nought is audible so fills the ear?Where nought is visible can make appearA veil with eyes that waver through, Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desireTo clasp and strike a slackened lyre, Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, Flame in a crystal vessel sailsBeneath a dome of jewelled spray, For land that drops the rosy dayOn nights of throbbing nightingales. Landward did the wonder flit, Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. We saw the heavens fling down their rose;On rapturous waves we saw her glide;The pearly sea-shell half enclose;The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;And we, afire to kiss her feet, no moreBehold than tracks along a startled shore, With brightened edges of dark leaves that feignAn ambush hoped, as heartless night remain. More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, The very she called forth by ripened bloodFor its next breath of being, murmurs; she, Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, The stream within us urged to flood;Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, Maid, woman and divinity;Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mateUnmated; she, our hunger and our fruitUntasted; she our written fateUnread; Life's flowering, Life's root:Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;The evanescent, ever-present she, Great Nature's stern necessityIn radiance clothed, to softness quelled;With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to takeOur breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break. The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, Her form is given to pardoned sight, And lets our mortal eyes receiveThe sovereign loveliness of celestial white;Adored by them who solitarily pace, In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, The paths among the meadow asphodel, Remembering. Never there her faceIs planetary; reddens to shore sea-shellAround such whiteness the enamoured airOf noon that clothes her, never there. Daughter of light, the joyful light, She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, Sweet in her disregard of aidDivine to conquer or persuade. A fountain jets from moss; a flowerBends gently where her sunset tresses shower. By guerdon of her brilliance may be seenWith eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen. Shorn of attendant Graces she can useHer natural snares to make her will supreme. A simple nymph it is, inclined to museBefore the leader foot shall dip in stream:One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;Her firm new breasts each pointing its own wayA knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. The bud of fresh virginity awaitsThe wooer, and all roseate will she burst:She touches on the hour of happy mates;Still is she unaware she wakens thirst. And while commanding blissful sight believeIt holds her as a body strained to breast, Down on the underworld's perpetual eveShe plunges the possessor dispossessed;And bids believe that image, heaving warm, Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;The phantom any breeze blows out of form;A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim. The rapture shed the torture weaves;The direst blow on human heart she deals:The pain to know the seen deceives;Nought true but what insufferably feels. And stabs of her delicious note, That is as heavenly light to hearing, heardThrough shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, We answer as the midnight's morning's bird. She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;In her delicious laughter part revealed;Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:Yon folded couples, passing under shade, Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. We dolorous complainers had a dream, Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, We saw stand bare of her celestial beamThe glorious Goddess, and we dared desire. Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lipsOf upward curl to meanings half obscure;And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skipsShe nods: at once that creature wears her lure. Blush of our being between birth and death:Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:Her wily semblance nought of her denies;Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, The generous Goddess yields. And she can armHer dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. But scorn she has for them that walk alone;Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. The men as chief of criminals she disdains, And holds the reason in perceptive thought. More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathesFor couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. Comes there a tremor of night's forest hornAcross her garden from the insaner crew, She darkens to malignity of scorn. A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bringDead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. These, the irreverent of Life's design, Division between natural and divineWould cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;And these because the roses flood their cheeks, Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. With them is war; and well the Goddess knowsWhat undermines the race who mount the rose;How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. They who her sway withstand a sea defy, At every point of juncture must be proof;Nor look for mercy from the incessant surgeHer forces mixed of craft and passion urgeFor the one whelming wave to spring aloof. She, tenderness, is pitiless to themResisting in her godhead nature's truth. No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designedTo people and beflower the waste. Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:For death they live, in life they die. Her head the Goddess from them turns, As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. She views her quivering couples unconsoled, And of her beauty mirror they become, Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, They play the music made of two:Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:Cunninger than the numbered strings, For melodies, for harmonies, For mastered discords, and the thingsNot vocable, whose mysteriesAre inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend. Is it an anguish overflowing shameAnd the tongue's pudency confides to her, With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, Then is the Goddess tendernessMaternal, and she has a sister's tonesBenign to soothe intemperate distress, Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. Her gentleness imparts exhaling easeTo those of her milk-bearer votariesAs warm of bosom-earth as she; of the sourceDirect; erratic but in heart's excess;Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. And pray they under skies less overcast, That swiftly may her star of eve descend, Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, To lengthen blissful night will she befriend. Unfailing her reply to woman's voiceIn supplication instant. Is it man's, She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;And marks how he, who would be hawk at poiseAbove the bird, his plaintive song enjoys. She reads him when his humbled manhood weepsTo her invoked: distraction is implored. A smile, and he is up on godlike leapsAbove, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. His tales of her declare she condescends;Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:Moreover, quits a throne, and must encloseA queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose. She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springsEnraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. 'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verseRarely the music made of two ascends, And Beauty's Queen some other way is won. Or it may solve the riddle, that she lendsHerself to all, and yields herself to none, Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raisedIn hot assurance under shade of doubt:And numerous are the images bepraisedAs Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout. Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to wooLove's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. That is her garden's precept, seen where shinesHer blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. Daughter of light, the joyful light, She bids her couples face full East, Reflecting radiance, even when from her feastTheir outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;High confidence in her whose aid is lentTo lovers lifting the tuned instrument, Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's. Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woeHe lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. For him requiring woman's arts to pleaseInfantile tastes with babe reluctances, No race of giants! In the woman's veinsPersuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submissIn her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;And is it needed that Love's daintier bruteBe snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. She is great Nature's ever intimateIn breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, Until perverted by her senseless male, She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, Elusive to allure, since he grew tame. Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, And greatest and most present, with her dowerOf the transcendent beauty, gained reputeFor meditated guile. She laughs to hearA charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, Her garden's histories tell of to all near. Let it be said, But less upon her guileDoth she rely for her immortal smile. Still let the rumour spread, and terror screensTo push her conquests by the simplest means. While man abjures not lustihead, nor swervesFrom earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves. Her spacious garden and her garden's grantShe offers in reward for handsome cheer:Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slantThe secret down a dewy leerOf corner eyelids into haze:Many a fair AphrosyneLike flower-bell to honey-bee:And here they flicker round the mazeBewildering him in heart and head:And here they wear the close demure, With subtle peeps to reassure:Others parade where love has bled, And of its crimson weave their mesh:Others to snap of fingers leap, As bearing breast with love asleep. These are her laughters in the flesh. Or would she fit a warrior mood, She lights her seeming unsubdued, And indicates the fortress-key. Or is it heart for heart that craves, She flecks along a run of wavesThe one to promise deeper sea. Bands of her limpid primitives, Or patterned in the curious braid, Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, For what he gives is he repaid. Good is it if by him 'tis heldHe wins the fairest ever welledFrom Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even INot fairer! and forbids him to deny, Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, -And be they doves or be they asps, -Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed. Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, Half savage must he stay, would he be crownedThe lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. Doth man divide divine NecessityFrom Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breastsA sword is driven; for those most glorious twainPresent her; armed to bless and to constrain. Of this he perishes; not she, the thronedOn rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. A loftier Reason out of deeper fountsEarth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disownedWhile red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, Uplifted by the innumerable hosts. Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, When the wild sap at high tide smitesWithin us; or benignly clearTo vision; or as the iris lightsOn fluctuant waters; she is oursTill set of man: the dreamed, the seen;Flushing the world with odorous flowers:A soft compulsion on terreneBy heavenly: and the world is hersWhile hunger after Beauty spurs. So is it sung in any spaceShe fills, with laugh at shallow lawsForbidding love's devised embrace, The music Beauty from it draws. Poem: A Reading of Life--The Test Of Manhood Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks, An army issues out of wilderness, With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;Obstruction in the van; insane excessOft at the heart; yet hard the onward stressUnto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;Divided from the haunted night it shone. That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprangEthereal Beauty in full morningtide. Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:It was another earth unto him sang. Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?From the Persuader came it, in those valesWhereunto she melodiously invites, Her troops of eager servitors regales?Not far those two great Powers of Nature speedDisciple steps on earth when sole they lead;Nor either points for us the way of flame. From him predestined mightier it came;His task to hold them both in breast, and yieldTheir dues to each, and of their war be field. The foes that in repulsion never ceased, Must he, who once has been the goodly beastOf one or other, at whose beck he ran, Constrain to make him serviceable man;Offending neither, nor the natural claimEach pressed, denying, for his true man's name. Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strifeTo hold them fast conjoined within him still;Submissive to his willAlong the road of life!And marvel not he wavered if at whilesThe forward step met frowns, the backward smiles. For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;Repentance offered ecstasy in pain. Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;A tread on shingle timed his lame advanceFlung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, He of the troubled marching army leanedOn godhead visible, on godhead screened;The radiant roseate, the curtained white;Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night. He drank of fictions, till celestial aidMight seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;And ever that imagined succour slewThe soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew. In fellowship religion has its founts:The solitary his own God reveres:Ascend no sacred MountsOur hungers or our fears. As only for the numbers Nature's careIs shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, So to Divinity the spring of prayerFrom brotherhood the one way upward leads. Like the sustaining airAre both for flowers and weeds. But he who claims in spirit to be flower, Will find them both an air that doth devour. Whereby he smelt his treason, who imploredExternal gifts bestowed but on the sword;Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;See a black adversary's ghost prevail;Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to winWhile still the conflict tore his breast within. Out of that agony, misread for thoseImprisoned Powers warring unappeased, The ghost of his black adversary rose, To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased. And long with him was wrestling ere emergedA mind to read in him the reflex shadeOf its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;By craven compromises hourly swayed. Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, The man's mind opened under weight of cloud. To penetrate the dark was it endowed;Stood day before a vision shooting wide. Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;The traversed wilderness exposed its track. He felt the far advance in looking back;Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm. Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwartAll ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;A stranger still, religiously divined;Not yet with understanding read aright. But when the mind, the cherishable mind, The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight, Himself as mirror raised among his kind, He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, Had come of many a grip in mastery, Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, And of his bosom made him lord, to keepThe starry roof of his unruffled frameAwake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deepBelow, above, aye with a wistful aim. The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown. To whom unwittingly did he aspireIn wilderness, where bitter was his need:To whom in blindness, as an earthy seedFor light and air, he struck through crimson mire. But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, All choral in its fruitful garden camp, The spiritual the palpable illumed. This gift of penetration and embrace, His prize from tidal battles lost or won, Reveals the scheme to animate his race:How that it is a warfare but begun;Unending; with no Power to interpose;No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, Heard of the Highest; never battle's close, The victory complete and victor crowned:Nor solace in defeat, save from that senseOf strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. In manhood must he find his competence;In his clear mind the spiritual food:God being there while he his fight maintains;Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, While he rejects the suicide despair;Accepts the spur of explicable pains;Obedient to Nature, not her slave:Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-Whence Evil in a world unread before;That mystery to simple springs resolved. His God the Known, diviner to adore, Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved. Inconscient, insensitive, she reignsIn iron laws, though rapturous fair her face. Back to the primal brute shall he retraceHis path, doth he permit to force her chainsA soft Persuader coursing through his veins, An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:What one the flash disdains;What one so gives it grace. But is he rightly manful in her eyes, A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, Desireing and desireable he shines;As peaches, that have caught the sun's upriseAnd kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines. Earth fills him with her juices, without fearThat she will cast him drunken down the steeps. All woman is she to this man most dear;He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:She conscient, she sensitive, in him;With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:By him humaner made; by his keen spursPricked to race past the pride in giant limb, Her crazy adoration of big thews, Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, Were thunder spitting lightnings on the worldIn daily deeds, and she their evening Muse. This man, this hero, works not to destroy;This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands; -He of the myriad eyes, the myriad handsCreative; in his edifice has joy. How strength may serve for purity is shownWhen he himself can scourge to make it clean. Withal his pitch of pride would not disownA sober world that walks the balanced meanBetween its tempters, rarely overthrown:And such at times his army's march has been. Near is he to great Nature in the thoughtEach changing Season intimately saith, That nought save apparition knows the death;To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought. She counts not loss a word of any weight;It may befal his passions and his greedsTo lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, But life gone breathless will she reinstate. Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets. Unresting she, unresting he, from changeTo change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;But he, the flower at head and soil at root, Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. And that way seems he bound; that way the road, With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, He travels, urged by some internal goad. Dares he behold the thing he is, what thingHe would become is in his mind its child;Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. So moves he forth in faith, if he has madeHis mind God's temple, dedicate to truth. Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;The star of sky upon his footway cast;Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's. Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;With her the barren Huntress alternate;His rough refractory off on kicking heelsTo rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?May not his aspect, like her own so fairReflexively, the central force belie, And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? 'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, Between his upper and his nether wit, Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;With such a grasp upon his brute as tellsOf wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a SunResplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. Poem: The Cageing Of Ares [Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague. ] How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughedAt sight of her boy Giants on the leapEach over other as they neighboured home, Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced. Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, It signalled some adventurous master-trickTo set Olympians buzzing in debate, Lest it might be their godhead undermined, The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes highOn shoulders of his brother Otos wavedFor the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roarWhile Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glutThe hurried spout. And as when drifting stormDisburdened loses clasp of here and yonA peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleamOf grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at lastSubsided, and the serious naked deed, With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believeThat these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, These two made up of lion, bear and fox, Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, Still by the reckoning infants among men, Had done the deed to strike the Titan hostIn envy dumb, in envious heart elate:These two combining strength and craft had snared, Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly cagedThe blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;The barren furrower of anointed fields;The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouthWhen they had seized on his implacable spear, Hugged him to reedy helplessness despiteHis godlike fury startled from amaze. For he had eyed them nearing him in play, The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, Unheeding his fell presence, by the mountOssa, beside a brushwood cavern; thereOn Earth's original fisticuffs they calledFor ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, Good servitors of Ares they would be, And ply the pointed spear to dominateTheir rebel restless fellows, villain broodVowed to defy Immortals. So it chancedAmusedly he watched them, and as oneThe lusty twain were on him and they had him. Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;A desolating fire to blind the sightWith splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, And shatter earth's delirious holiday, Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, Resolving to composure on its throbs. But see her in the Seasons through that year;That one glad year and the fair opening month. Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!War with her, gentle war with her, each dayHer sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strengthRenewed, indomitable; whereof they won, From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, Her ready secret: the abounding lifeReturned for valiant labour: she and theyDefeated and victorious turn by turn;By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. Exchange of powers of this conflict came;Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, As music unto the hand that smote the strings;And she the rosier from their showery brows, They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. Back to the primal rational of thoseWho suck the teats of milky earth, and claspStability in hatred of the insane, Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounceThe mortal mind's concept of earth's divorcedAbove; those beautiful, those masterful, Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?Earth in her happy children asked that word, Whereto within their breast was her reply. Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspiredThe audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruledThe Tyranny. This her voice within them told, When softly the Great Mother chid her sonsNot of the giant brood, who did createThose lawless Gods, first offspring of our brainSet moving by an abject blood, that wakedTo wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights; -Imagination's cradle poesyBecome a monstrous pressure upon men; -Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessedBy light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejectsFor earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneathYoung vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, Confidently to cling. And when brown cornSwayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;When vine-roots daily down a rubble soilDrank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;The very eye of passion drowsed by excess, And yet a burning lion for the spring;Then in that time of general cherishment, Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, Then did good Gaea's children gratefullyLift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace, Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's callHarmoniously and images her Law;Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, In memories made present on the brainBy natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;The picture of an earth allied to heaven;Between them the known smile behind black masks;Rightly their various moods interpreted;And frolic because toilful children borneWith larger comprehension of Earth's aimAt loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid. Poem: The Night-Walk Awakes for me and leaps from shroudAll radiantly the moon's own nightOf folded showers in streamer cloud;Our shadows down the highway whiteOr deep in woodland woven-boughed, With yon and yon a stem alight. I see marauder runagatesAcross us shoot their dusky wink;I hear the parliament of chatsIn haws beside the river's brink;And drops the vole off alder-banks, To push his arrow through the stream. These busy people had our thanksFor tickling sight and sound, but themeThey were not more than breath we drewDelighted with our world's embrace:The moss-root smell where beeches grew, And watered grass in breezy space;The silken heights, of ghostly bloomAmong their folds, by distance draped. 'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, That cried to have its chaos shaped:Absorbing, little noting, stillEnriched, and thinking it bestowed;With wistful looks on each far hillFor something hidden, something owed. Unto his mantled sister, DayHad given the secret things we soughtAnd she was grave and saintly gay;At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;She flew on it, then folded wings, In meditation passing lone, To breathe around the secret things, Which have no word, and yet are known;Of thirst for them are known, as airIs health in blood: we gained enoughBy this to feel it honest fare;Impalpable, not barren, stuff. A pride of legs in motion keptOur spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept:The posts that named the swallowed mile;Beside the straight canal the hutAbandoned; near the river's sourceIts infant chirp; the shortest cut;The roadway missed; were our discourse;At times dear poets, whom some viewTranscendent or subdued evokedTo speak the memorable, the true, The luminous as a moon uncloaked;For proof that there, among earth's dumb, A soul had passed and said our best. Or it might be we chimed on someHistoric favourite's astral crest, With part to reverence in its gleam, And part to rivalry the shout:So royal, unuttered, is youth's dreamOf power within to strike without. But most the silences were sweet, Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feelIt lived in such divine conceitAs envies aught we stamp for real. To either then an untold taleWas Life, and author, hero, we. The chapters holding peaks to scale, Or depths to fathom, made our glee;For we were armed of inner fires, Unbled in us the ripe desires;And passion rolled a quiet sea, Whereon was Love the phantom sail. Poem: The Hueless Love Unto that love must we through fire attain, Which those two held as breath of common air;The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain. Midway the road of our life's term they met, And one another knew without surprise;Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret. To them it was revealed how they had foundThe kindred nature and the needed mind;The mate by long conspiracy designed;The flower to plant in sanctuary ground. Avowed in vigilant solicitudeFor either, what most lived within each breastThey let be seen: yet every human testDemanding righteousness approved them good. She leaned on a strong arm, and little fearedAbandonment to help if heaved or sankHer heart at intervals while Love looked blank, Life rosier were she but less revered. An arm that never shook did not obscureHer woman's intuition of the bliss -Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, Across the narrow plank--he could abjure. Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, Was all of earthly in their love untold, Beyond all earthly known to them who wed. So has there come the gust at South-west flungBy sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung. Poem: Song In The Songless They have no song, the sedges dry, And still they sing. It is within my breast they sing, As I pass by. Within my breast they touch a string, They wake a sigh. There is but sound of sedges dry;In me they sing. Poem: Union In Disseverance Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;She that star overhead in slow descent:That white star with the front of angel she;He undone in his rays of glory spent Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, He casts round her, and knows his hour of restIncomplete, were the light for which he dies, Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest. Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;Life's full throb over breathless and abased:Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, One, more one than the bridally embraced. Poem: The Burden Of Strength If that thou hast the gift of strength, then knowThy part is to uplift the trodden low;Else in a giant's grasp until the endA hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend. Poem: The Main Regret [Written for the Charing Cross Album] I. Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omissionFrown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair. II. Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scatteredSeed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flatteredBack to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone. Poem: Alternation Between the fountain and the rillI passed, and saw the mighty willTo leap at sky; the careless run, As earth would lead her little son. Beneath them throbs an urgent well, That here is play, and there is war. I know not which had most to tellOf whence we spring and what we are. Poem: Hawarden When comes the lighted day for men to readLife's meaning, with the work before their handsTill this good gift of breath from debt is freed, Earth will not hear her children's wailful bandsDeplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge;Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge, Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis knownBy what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. A splendid image built of man has flown;His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. Ours the great privilege to have had oneAmong us who celestial tasks has done. Poem: At The Close To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;And that black spot in each embattled host, Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. Now is it red artillery and white steel;Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. So in all times of man's descent insaneTo brute, did strength and craft combining strike, Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. But at the close he entered Thy domain, Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-likeHe tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe. Poem: Forest History I. Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in. Heroic who came out; for round them hungA wavering phantom's red volcano tongue, With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: II. Old Earth's original Dragon; there retiredTo his last fastness; overthrown by few. Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. Then man to play devorant straight was fired. III. More intimate became the forest fearWhile pillared darkness hatched malicious lifeAt either elbow, wolf or gnome or knifeAnd wary slid the glance from ear to ear. IV. In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, Revealed where lured the swallower byway. V. Dead outlook, flattened back with hard reboundOff walls of distance, left each mounted height. It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spiteOf humble human being, held the ground. VI. Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slowThe feet sustained by track of feet pursuedPained steps, and found the common brotherhoodBy sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe. VII. Anon a mason's work amazed the sight, And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. VIII. What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. Benignant works explained the chanting brood. Their monastery lit black solitude, As one might think a star that heavenward led. IX. Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, Or played with it, and had their white retreat. X. Into big books of metal clasps they pored. They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. The treasures women are whose aim is praise, Was shown in them: the Garden half restored. XI. A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, The lesser savage offered bogs and trees. XII. Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:And inmost spots of ancient horror shoneAs temples under beams of trials bygone;For in them sang brave times with God in view. XIII. Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, Like night's first little stars through clearing showers. Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towersThe wilderness commanded with fierce mien. XIV. Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance. XV. It might be that two errant lords acrossThe block of each came edged, and at sharp cryThey charged forthwith, the better man to try. One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss. XVI. Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, The robbers into gruesome durance drew. Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue!She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain. XVII. As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:A toady cave beside an ague fen, Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps. XVIII. By daylight now the forest fear could readItself, and at new wonders chuckling went. Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spentA dart that laughed at distance and at speed. XIX. Right loud the bugle's hallali elateRang forth of merry dingles round the tors;And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate. XX. Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last. To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke. XXI. The city urchin mooned on forest air, On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thickAs swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sickFor thinking that his dearer home was there. XXII. Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprangAn old-world echo, like no mortal thing. The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring, But held in ear it had a chilly clang. XXIII. Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, As though the leagues of woodland held them wrongedTo hear an axe and see a township climb. XXIV. The forest's erewhile emperor at eveHad voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. At midnight a small people danced the dales, So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve XXV. Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. The pensioned forester beside his crutch, Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes. XXVI. Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;Devourer, and insensibly devoured;In whom the city over forest flowered, The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart. XXVII. There found he in new form that Dragon old, From tangled solitudes expelled; and taughtHow blindly each its antidote besought;For either's breath the needs of either told. XXVIII. Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone, He showed what charm the human concourse works:Amid the press of men, what virtue lurksWhere bubble sacred wells of wildness lone. XXIX. Our conquest these: if haply we retainThe reverence that ne'er will overrunDue boundaries of realms from Nature won, Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane. Poem: A Garden Idyl With sagest craft Arachne workedHer web, and at a corner lurked, Awaiting what should plump her soon, To case it in the death-cocoon. Sagaciously her home she choseFor visits that would never close;Inside my chalet-porch her feastPlucked all the winds but chill North-east. The finished structure, bar on bar, Had snatched from light to form a star, And struck on sight, when quick with dews, Like music of the very Muse. Great artists pass our single sense;We hear in seeing, strung to tense;Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, To think such beauty means a trap. But Nature's genius, even man'sAt best, is practical in plans;Subservient to the needy thought, However rare the weapon wrought. As long as Nature holds it goodTo urge her creatures' quest for foodWill beauty stamp the just intentOf weapons upon service bent. For beauty is a flower of rootsEmbedded lower than our boots;Out of the primal strata springs, And shows for crown of useful things Arachne's dream of prey to sizeAspired; so she could nigh despiseThe puny specks the breezes roundSupplied, and let them shake unwound;Assured of her fat fly to come;Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum;Who takes the fatal odds in fight, And gives repast an appetite, By plunging, whizzing, till his wingsAre webbed, and in the lists he swings, A shrouded lump, for her to seeHer banquet in her victory. This matron of the unnumbered threads, One day of dandelions' headsDistributing their gray perruquesUp every gust, I watched with looksDiscreet beside the chalet-door;And gracefully a light wind bore, Direct upon my webster's wall, A monster in the form of ball;The mildest captive ever snared, That neither struggled nor despaired, On half the net invading hung, And plain as in her mother tongue, While low the weaver cursed her lures, Remarked, "You have me; I am yours. " Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, Her dream of size she saw, agape. Midway the vast round-raying beardA desiccated midge appeared;Whose body pricked the name of meal, Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;Provocative of dread and wrath, Contempt and horror, in one froth, Inextricable, insensible, His poison presence there would dwell, Declaring him her dream fulfilled, A catch to compliment the skilled;And she reduced to beaky skin, Disgraceful among kith and kin Against her corner, humped and aged, Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, Beyond disgust or hope in guile. Ridiculously volatileHe seemed to her last spark of mind;And that in pallid ash declinedBeneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she feltThat he, the light wind's libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was;Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate. This muted drama, hour by hour, I watched amid a world in flower, Ere yet Autumnal threads had laidTheir gray-blue o'er the grass's blade, And still along the garden-runThe blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. Arachne crouched unmoved; perchanceHer visitor performed a dance;She puckered thinner; he the sameAs when on that light wind he came. Next day was told what deeds of nightWere done; the web had vanished quite;With it the strange opposing pair;And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart's content, A solitary filament. Poem: Foresight And Patience Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain, Are they who point our pathway and sustain. They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. When they do meet, it is our earth inspired. To see Life's formless offspring and subdueDesire of times unripe, we have these two, Whose union is right reason: join they hands, The world shall know itself and where it stands;What cowering angel and what upright beastMake man, behold, nor count the low the least, Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. When these two meet, a point of time is ours. As in a land of waterfalls, that flowSmooth for the leap on their great voice below, Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, Will capture hearing with the liquid song, So, while the headlong world's imperious forceResounded under, heard I these discourse. First words, where down my woodland walk she led, To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said: - Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, When still I find you in this mire alone. - The few steps taken at a funeral paceBy men had slain me but for those you trace. - Look I once back, a broken pinion I:Black as the rebel angels rained from sky! - Needs must you drink of me while here you live, And make me rich in feeling I can give. - A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:Yet must I read my sister for the How. My daisy better knows her God of beamsThan doth an eagle that to mount him seems. She hath the secret never fieriest reachOf wing shall master till men hear her teach. - Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, My semblance when I have you not as now. The quiet creatures who escape mishapBear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:A picture of the settled peace desiredBy cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. I listen at their breasts: is there no jarOf wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, And such a picture as the piercing mindRanks beneath vegetation. Not resignedAre my true pupils while the world is brute. What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, Stronger impels the motion of my heart. I am not Resignation's counterpart. If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, Content, but how to savour hope deferred. We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;Soon carrion if very earth are we!The coursing veins, the constant breath, the useOf sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat, "Like other corpses, but without death's plea. - My sister calls for battle; is it she? - Rather a world of pressing men in arms, Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charmsEach drowsy malady and coiling viceWith dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!No home is here for peace while evil breeds, While error governs, none; and must the seedsYou sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, Let stout contention drive deep furrows, bloodMoisten, and make new channels of its flood! - My sober little maid, when we meet first, Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. So can I not of her till circumstanceDrugs cravings. Here we see how men advanceA doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the wordPrompting their hungers, and they grandly march, As to band-music under Victory's arch. Thus was it, and thus is it; save that thenThe beauty of frank animals had men. - Observe them, and down rearward for a term, Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. Thence look this way, across the fields that showMen's early form of speech for Yes and No. My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad. I knew my home where I had choice to feelThe toad beneath a harrow or a heel. - Speak of this Age. - When you it shall discernBright as you are, to me the Age will turn. - For neither of us has it any care;Its learning is through Science to despair. - Despair lies down and grovels, grapples notWith evil, casts the burden of its lot. This Age climbs earth. - To challenge heaven. - Not lessThe lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!That know I, though the echoes of it wail, For one step upward on the crags you scale. Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, Until from warmth of many breasts, that beatA temperate common music, sunlike heatThe happiness not predatory sheds! - But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads, Now rages to outdo a horny Past. Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vastAre thrown by every novel light upraised. The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazedAnd trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells. Combustibles on hot combustiblesRun piling, for one spark to roll in fireThe mountain-torrent of infernal ireAnd leave the track of devils where men built. Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guiltConfesses in a cry for help shrill loud, If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:None save they but the souls which them contain. No extramural God, the God withinAlone gives aid to city charged with sin. A world that for the spur of fool and knave, Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save?But men who ply their wits in such a school, Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool. - Much have I studied hard Necessity!To know her Wisdom's mother, and that weMay deem the harshness of her later criesIn labour a sure goad to prick the wise, If men among the warnings which convulse, Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse. Long ere the rising of this Age of ours, The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, And are as lasting as the parent thing. Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will. Behold such army gathering: ours the spur, No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. Not fool or knave is now the enemyO'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery!A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. Now must the brother soul alive in each, His traitorous individual devildomHold subject lest the grand destruction come. Dimly men see it menacing apaceTo overthrow, perchance uproot the race. Within, without, they are a field of tares:Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, And wherefore warrior service they must yield, Shines visible as life on either field. That is my comfort, following shock on shock, Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, The human and Satanic intellect, Determined for their uses to controlWhat forces on the earth and under roll, Their granite rock runs igneous; now they standPledged to the heavens for safety of their land. They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war. - My sister, as I read them in my glass, Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. How waken them that have not any bentSave browsing--the concrete indifferent!Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:They fear not for the race when full the trough. They have much fear of giving up the ghost;And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. - If I could see with you, and did not faintIn beating wing, the future I would paint. Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:Now meanwhile is another mass awake, Once denser than the grunters of the sty. If I could see with you! Could I but fly! - The length of days that you with them have housed, An outcast else, approves their cause espoused. - O true, they have a cause, and woe for us, While still they have a cause too piteous!Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined, They walk no longer with a stumbler blind, And quicken in the virtue of their cause, To think me a poor mouther of old saws!I wait the issue of a battling Age;The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage;Instructing them through their acutest sense, How close the dangers of indifference!Already have my people shown their worth, More love they light, which folds the love of Earth. That love to love of labour leads: thence loveOf humankind--earth's incense flung above. - Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swellsOn Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;And if I bid it face what _I_ observe, Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! - Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil, Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:Disowned them as the unholiest of Time, Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime. Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:As little as Time's earliest knew the sky. Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flameAt intervals, in proof of whom they came. To strengthen our foundations is the taskOf this tough Age; not in your beams to bask, Though, lighted by your beams, down mining cavesThe rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves. My sister sees no round beyond her mood;To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves, It moves: O much for me to say it moves!About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile, Though not the stream of the paternal smile:And where his tide of nourishment he drives, An Abyssinian wantonness revives. Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs, The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills. To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers, He is the vast Insensate who devoursHis golden promise over leagues of seed, Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed. The races which on barbarous force begin, Inherit onward of their origin, And cancelled blessings will the current lengthReveal till they know need of shaping strength. 'Tis not in men to recognize the needBefore they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed. Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed, For tens up the safe mountains at his head. Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong. - That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;Your Many are more merrily aliveThan erewhile when I gloried in the pageOf radiant singer and anointed sage. Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!All structures built upon a narrow spaceMust fall, from having not your hosts for base. O thrice must one be you, to see them shiftAlong their desert flats, here dash, there drift;With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!And thrice must one be you, to wait releaseFrom duress in the swamp of their increase. At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed, Philosophers behold; desponding view. Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains. Belated vessels on a rising sea, They seem: they pass! - But not Philosophy! - Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despiseNought but the coward in us! That way liesThe wisdom making passage through our slough. Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate. That photosphere of our high fountain One, Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun, Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!Advantage to the Many: that we nameGod's voice; have there the surety in our aim. This thought unto my sister do I owe, And irony and satire off me throw. They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. Who never yet of scattered lamps was bornTo speed a world, a marching world to warn, But sunward from the vivid Many springs, Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings. Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse Poem: The Invective of Achilles [Iliad, B. I. V. 149] "Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one, Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians, Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans, Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvestsRavaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksomeMountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justicePluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me, portionWon with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when AchaiansGave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat, Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us, Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing boreOff to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed!So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems meHomeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect, I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store. " Poem: The Invective of Achilles--V. 225 "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou!Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of AchaiaDared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-stroke. Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee. Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects;Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one. Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-budsNever again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the mountains, No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped offLeaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of AchaiaThroughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying HectorTumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-strings, Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of Achaians. " Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians [Iliad, B. II V. 455] Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendourGleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault. They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans, Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions, Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth;So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured forthOn that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath themEarth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the horse-hooves. Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their thousandsMany as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season. Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse, Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the milk-pailsAlso, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held, Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush them. Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, knowEasily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture, So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for onslaught, Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon, He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder, He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon. Poem: Agamemnon In The Fight [Iliad, B. XI. V. 148] These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest, Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud, Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-hooves)Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord AgamemnonFollowed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives. Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped woodland, This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the scrubwoodStretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing, So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scatteredTrojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened, Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field, Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were outstretchedFlat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates. Poem: Paris And Diomedes [Iliad; B. XI V. 378] So he, with a clear shout of laughter, Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:"Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced theeInto the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion. "Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:"Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons, Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth!Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest, My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered, Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops, Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women. " Poem: Hypnos On Ida [Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283] They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts, Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos, Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland. There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant, Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on IdaLustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for concealment, That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the mountains, Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis. Poem: Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans [Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394] Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle, Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the Northwind;Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing, Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees'Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians', Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict. Poem: The Horses Of Achilles [Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426] So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground, Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there, Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector. Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores, Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and oft, too, Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten. Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious, Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians. Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone, Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car, Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessantRan the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids, Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted, Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the yoke-bow. Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shookPitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom;"Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortalMaster; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhereAught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has movement. " Poem: The Mares Of The Camargue [From the Mireio of Mistral] A hundred mares, all white! their manesLike mace-reed of the marshy plainsThick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears:And when the fiery squadron rearsBursting at speed, each mane appearsEven as the white scarf of a fayFloating upon their necks along the heavens away. O race of humankind, take shame!For never yet a hand could tame, Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdueThe mares of the Camargue. I have known, By treason snared, some captives shown;Expatriate from their native Rhone, Led off, their saline pastures far from view: And on a day, with prompt rebound, They have flung their riders to the ground, And at a single gallop, scouring free, Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice tenOf long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then, Back to the Vacares again, After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea For of this savage race unbent, The ocean is the element. Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure, Still with the white foam fleck'd are they, And when the sea puffs black from grey, And ships part cables, loudly neighThe stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar; And keen as a whip they lash and crackTheir tails that drag the dust, and backScratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he, The God, drives deep his trident teeth, Who in one horror, above, beneath, Bids storm and watery deluge seethe, And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea. Cant. Iv.